Saving their skins

Is freedom of speech a blessing? The electronic media seems to ignore this issue and whenever any government or public group tries to raise the issue, they take it as a personal attack. Freedom of speech is important but it comes with responsibilities which have to be maintained. Undoubtedly, the electronic media has brought a big change in society, and the general public can now analyze things that happen and get different views.

The efforts of electronic and print media are appreciable but we must ask ourselves if this freedom is giving them a license to promote hate and intolerance, or are we guiding our nation on the road to unity and love?

The talk shows, in which mostly the same people are invited to say the same things like parrots, seem to be propaganda rather than the truth. There are many relevant questions that are never asked, and our media is also politicized as we saw recently in the case of a private TV channel’s exposure. In Pakistan, the ‘freedom of speech’ is misused, as is every other freedom in this ‘democratic’ country.

Most of the people don’t even know what a democracy is and how they can ‘derail’ it, something which is being used by the PML-N politicians extensively to save their own skins.